


Longing

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6810589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Altair dies in the water, but his body walks out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longing

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt:   
> Person A was on a plane that disappeared with everyone on board. Person B, to whom A was very important, is between accepting A is dead and trying believe A's alive. B sees some picture or something in a magazine with a very familiar figure in the background that leads B to believe A's alive. Cue desperate search! B thinks they find A but...there are things that lurk in the dark and when there's a convenient corpse why let it go to waste? But, why settle? Here's another body. Less soggy too...

“What did they take from you?” the Other asked. 

It thought of the ocean, not the voice, of the waves as they ebbed and flowed. With Its eyes closed, and the crushing blackness filling up the empty, dry spaces of its borrowed body, It thought It could hear the water all around it. It could hear the sound of its other’s sweet song promising It eternity. 

“My heart,” It said. “They took it from me.”

The Other was quiet then, with no questions left to nag at It with. Perhaps The Other sat in justified rage, counting seconds until It died (at last) and this borrowed flesh would be only an empty vessel again. Perhaps the empty vessel was worth more; perhaps The Other could cry over its loss when it reclaimed what It had borrowed. They would hold a funeral and they would weep and agony would slowly turn to acceptance and The Other would live on, lonely but still living.

“My heart was named Altair,” The Other said, “you took him from me.”

But death was singing to It now, and nothing else seemed very important at all. (It thought of the water, red with the blood of the dying and the horrible taste of the sinking metal; and how long it had watched this fleshy vessel struggle against the pull of inevitability.) “Then we are even.”

\--

It lay in the heat and the light and It thought of many things. The coiling tightness of the leather that bound Its wrists, the uncomfortable stick of the salt that made Its bed, sprinkled by hurried-hateful-hands across Its borrowed flesh. 

It thought, if it were very still, it could hear the shift of water in this borrowed body, the collapsing of the vessels that ran its red warm blood from the meaty lump in its chest to the tingling tips of its odd shaped toes. Yes, It could hear the shrivel of the air pockets in this borrowed chest, the thirsty screaming of animal brain, still sparking off signals as it tried-and-failed to survive.

“They took something from me,” It said again with foreign mouth and awful throat. The words a whistling whisper from cracked lips and blanched white tongue. “They took it and they did not give it back. They took it from me.”

The light was immense; it was overpowering at every angle. A dozen lamps turned with naked bulbs to sear its flesh. It was baking alive on a bed of table salt; the victim of a premeditated death. 

The creature, full of damp, red blood, was hovering beyond reach and sight. Its voice was a lull of the dark ocean: full of necessary wetness. The sound of it a far worse torture than the state of its body; that lingering hope that it would slip and come near enough. “You took someone from me,” The Other said with righteous spite. “I want him back.”

\--

It was the water, perhaps, that gave It away; the water that gave The Other the idea to bake it in salt and heat. The fleshy vessel It had borrowed was full of red blood, thick and wet and hot, but the thirst was most terrible under the heated lamps that filled this strange world beyond the choppy waves of Its ocean home. So It drank water in tall glasses with thin black straws, served frigid with bits of ice. 

The Other; the lost lover (or brother, or something), had stared at It with narrowing brown eyes and a curious half-smile on its face. “You don’t remember, but you hated water.”

And It conceded, “you think I would, after the accident,” but water-was-life, and It could not stop itself. 

The other (lover, lost and lonely) was cautious across a table and suspicious behind closed doors. They were playacting as friendly in a single room with two beds and only one shower. And It was careful, listening to stories of their adventures. 

“Do you think you’ll remember?” The Other asked it with the flat-bright-screen of its flat-black-phone cradled in its palm. Their faces (its borrowed one, this lover’s grin) were staring back them with beaming joy. “Does any of it seem familiar?”

“I feel that I am searching for something I cannot find,” It said. There was no lie in the words, no deception to Its purpose. It searched-for and longed-for another It had lost. It’s specific other that had circled the great depths of the ocean with it, around and around in a darkness so complete that these fragile flesh vessels could not have imagined it. It _longed_ for the other that it had lost in the rolling of waves, above the darkness, just beneath the hateful light. “Something was taken from me.”

The Other touched It with soft fingers, spread hot-and-dry across Its seeping flesh. The Other nodded like it _understood_ and maybe it did. The Other had lost too, a lover (or a brother) to the sea. 

\--

It was found in a city with tall glass buildings and infinite streets. It was found between one corner and the next by The Other with its hurried hands and its joyful face. It did not share memories with the vessel, It did not remember the things that this vessel had seen. There was no vital spark of _living_ left inside the vessel’s skull, but there was memory in its hands that clenched at the sight of The Other. There was memory in its chest that squeezed. 

It thought; this is The Other that had kept the fleshy thing alive so long.

It thought, how plain to have incited such struggle and such fear. The Other was only a man; made of the same things as this fleshy vessel. It was not unique against the many others, or special or significant in any way that mattered. 

But The Other held It by the hands, and pulled It into a hug. The Other cried with salt-tears on its face, and hurried-hurried words saying, “they told me you were dead. I didn’t want to believe it, I knew it wasn’t true. They told me everyone had died—but here you are.”

It thought of the other It had lost, the one that had been stolen from It in the sea. And It smiled at this Other, and it said, “yes, I am here.” But It could sustain no lie, “but I do not remember you. I do not remember anything before the shore.”

“That’s okay,” this Other said with voice full of lover’s wrath. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Because you’re here.”

\--

It walked because It could not stand the rumble of the wheeled things that coughed poisonous fumes into the air. It walked along roads and fields and found streams that were deep enough to swim. It travelled from the salt-sandy coast to the vast wasteland, filled with flowing waves of brown. It stood on the baked earth with miserable longing; a quiet, desperate longing to be at the end of Its journey.

And It sat, there, beside a road with filth on Its hand and red-peeling burns across Its back. It sat and It thought of the end (of this vessel, fleshy and hopeless bobbing in water) and how it must come to them all. 

\--

There was too much light beyond the grasp of the water. There was too much light at the edge of the sea. There was no infinity to be found on the surface world where lights-and-sounds-and sharp-repeating patterns suffocated the fleshy things that walked there. 

It had come from the bottom of the sea to find what was lost; to scour this flat, dry, hateful earth until It was reunited with that which had been taken. It could feel the dying beat of Its mate’s lonely heart—kept somewhere on this miserable earth. 

It was soaked and soggy, Its flesh wrinkled and white—bloated bubbles beneath tender skin. Its eyes hurt from the light and its ears from the noise—too many hours spent struggling in the sea, rising and falling with the waves as It came to this unknown shore. 

The others, these other humans (made of dry and fragile things), stared at It with curled lip and horrified eyes. One and then another stopped, with hurtful dry hands and hurried-hurried words.

“Are you alright?” they asked It, “do you need help?” they asked It. 

“They took something from me,” It said. 

\--

The great metal beast hit the waves with jarring force. It scattered the lazy fish and the floating birds. It was screaming when it landed, a great sudden noise: fire and living sounds, all at once coming to a halt with a hiss beneath the clutching waves of the ocean. The wrench of metal and the devastating tear of parts shook through the water. 

It could hear the last whispers of the fleshy things that were trapped in its belly. It could hear their panic, and feel the rush of their hearts pumping-and-pumping blood. 

They did not succumb slowly to the waves. They did not go gently into the deep. 

It circled them, an infinity of loops, watching as they fought death. It watched how hard they struggled to keep their slick and failing grip on foamy floats. The little ones fell first, pulled down-and-down into the belly of hungry things that hid in the deep.

Yes, It circled and It watched, It tightened its turns until they were all falling, each of them killed by fatigue and distress. It listened to the beat of their hearts slow and stutter and fail. It listened as the water filled the pockets of air that shaped their chests. 

It lingered and waited until there was only one, a single fleshy vessel left clinging to the hope of survival. It thought, if It had only had a voice, It may have asked why this one still fought. There was no possible survival in these choppy waves. There was no hope for rescue in the vast-and-bleak nothingness that surrounded them. Yet the fleshy thing fought to the surface each time, kicking and shaking to regain its freedom. 

But It thought it understood; It thought it could feel something very similar to this last living thing. This _person_ that clung to the floating foam and the bits of wreckage long after the water and battered and bruised it. It circled beneath the fleshy vessel’s dangling feet and kept it afloat.

Yes, It understood. 

This was injustice; this was tragedy. This fleshy thing that would not succumb, it had left someone behind—very far from here—and it could not bear the thought of parting with them. It could not tolerate the loneliness and the fury of separation. 

Yes, It understood. 

So It circled, and circled, spread out Its body as far as it would go so there was shield between this tasty fleshy thing and the creatures beneath them that dined on tender meat. It circled and circled until its limbs were tired, until the bright light beyond the waves dimmed to a swollen gray knot and the water cooled. It circled as It listened to the heart of this fleshy thing slowed-and-slowed, suffocated by the chill and the water and the hopelessness. 

When the water claimed its final victim, It caught the fleshy thing with its body—thin and cloud-like, spread out and fluttering in the water. It thought: they would never be reunited with those that they had lost. 

It thought; if It had only had a mouth to speak, and words to ask, this fleshy thing might have understood Its purpose. That it might have given permission for its body to be used for greater purpose. 

Yes, this thing would understand. It was sure of the truth as It slid inside of this fleshy thing, down and down and through, until the vessel was too full to take any more.


End file.
